LUMEN PROJECT

LUMEN will demonstrate that the ecosystem approach, originally introduced for the protection of biodiversity, can be used as the backbone of a comprehensive transcultural and transnational eco-legal system, due to the existence of a common cultural background beyond the appearing “fracture” between man and nature that characterizes the Anthropocene’s crisis. This assumption will be demonstrated through the analysis of the innovations coming from Latin America and Africa, based on integral and unitary visions on “man and nature”, and the traces of the ecosystem approach in environmental laws of European States. Even though current environmental law system is falling short to offer adequate solutions to such crisis, the law remains a strategic asset to foster social, economic, cultural transformation, and shall contribute to build a comprehensive and holistic response to safeguard the “higher interest” of the interconnected globe and all its human and non-human components.

LUMEN aims at exploring and defining the existing common ground for the ecosystem approach through the comparative analysis of case studies from Europe, Latin America and Africa with the purpose of translating it into a viable and inclusive model for future normativity, in Europe and beyond. LUMEN aims to move beyond the state of the art, embedding its overall objective within the PNRR topic “sustainability and protection of natural resources” (PNRR -Cluster 6, objective 6). The research results will be “innovative governance models”, enabling sustainability through the application of “new knowledge”. In fact, traditional and local knowledge can be embedded in the current legal system, resulting in innovative legal frameworks and paradigms. The key for the achievement of such a goal is a transnational and transcultural approach, producing a tripartite dialogue between continents and different environmental cultures and normative frameworks.

The ecosystem approach is inherently multidimensional, therefore capturing the complexity of the approach and fruitfully developing it into viable legal models require a research methodology that combines various disciplines and methods. While robustly rooted in comparative law, LUMEN relies on a range of methods and tools to generate and analyze evidence, to ensure that our evidence has an impact upon society, and to establish a legacy of evidence-based legal modelling that can be utilized by policy and rules-makers well beyond the duration of the project.

Next Generation EU

PRIN 2022 PNRR “LUMEN - Law of nature and human ecosystem approach: modelling a transcultural eco-legal framework”, P.I. prof.ssa S. Bagni, Università degli Studi di Bologna, finanziato dall'Unione Europea – NextGenerationEU a valere sul Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza (PNRR) – Missione 4 Istruzione e ricerca – Componente 2 Dalla ricerca all’impresa – Investimento 1.1, Avviso PRIN 2022 PNRR DD n. 1409 del 14 settembre 2022, codice proposta P20222H49L – CUP J53D23018680001.